Castro's "26th of July Movement" (M-26-7) originally had very limited political goals. Beyond overthrowing Batista, they included some redistribution of land and some degree of nationalisation of public services, and confiscation of a lot of companies and property they considered basically fruits of Batista's corruption, but beyond that there were wide disagreements, and there certainly was not a clear agreed goal of introducing socialism at the outset.
Castro had been on friendly terms with Batista for years before. Batista gave him money for his honeymoon, and even considered him for government. Some saw him as radical, but Batista at least considered him as a potentially viable cabinet minister, despite himself being very much explicitly anti-socialist, though of course it's possible Batista saw it as a way of pacifying him.
Castro may well have had exposure to socialist ideas before then, but at the outset he was basically a nationalist with anti-imperialist views. It was first after Batista's coup and crackdown on dissidents, that Castro seriously started pushing a more radical agenda publicly.
Even them, after overthrowing Batista, Castro looked to the US as a potential ally.
But when exactly Castro started supporting Marxist-Leninism is open for debate. Castro denied it into '60 at least. Late in '61 he then claimed to have been a Marxist-Leninist secretly for some years, but he clashed with the more Soviet friendly parts of his own movement at times, and the Soviets themselves doubted his sincerity - not least because of his past overtures to the US, and how his "admission" coincided with increasing Soviet financial support.
Whatever Castro was or was not early on, there was a decade long period of Castro moving closer and closer to the Soviets where you can see the process going in lockstep with each new US rejection and each new Soviet overture, and where there's a very real possibility that the US could have turned Cuba into an ally and encouraged more liberal policies. Of course we'll never know.
Castro's "26th of July Movement" (M-26-7) originally had very limited political goals. Beyond overthrowing Batista, they included some redistribution of land and some degree of nationalisation of public services, and confiscation of a lot of companies and property they considered basically fruits of Batista's corruption, but beyond that there were wide disagreements, and there certainly was not a clear agreed goal of introducing socialism at the outset.
Castro had been on friendly terms with Batista for years before. Batista gave him money for his honeymoon, and even considered him for government. Some saw him as radical, but Batista at least considered him as a potentially viable cabinet minister, despite himself being very much explicitly anti-socialist, though of course it's possible Batista saw it as a way of pacifying him.
Castro may well have had exposure to socialist ideas before then, but at the outset he was basically a nationalist with anti-imperialist views. It was first after Batista's coup and crackdown on dissidents, that Castro seriously started pushing a more radical agenda publicly.
Even them, after overthrowing Batista, Castro looked to the US as a potential ally.
But when exactly Castro started supporting Marxist-Leninism is open for debate. Castro denied it into '60 at least. Late in '61 he then claimed to have been a Marxist-Leninist secretly for some years, but he clashed with the more Soviet friendly parts of his own movement at times, and the Soviets themselves doubted his sincerity - not least because of his past overtures to the US, and how his "admission" coincided with increasing Soviet financial support.
Whatever Castro was or was not early on, there was a decade long period of Castro moving closer and closer to the Soviets where you can see the process going in lockstep with each new US rejection and each new Soviet overture, and where there's a very real possibility that the US could have turned Cuba into an ally and encouraged more liberal policies. Of course we'll never know.